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God's Grace: More Powerful Than Our Sin

During this summer we have explored the life of David. We
studied some of his most significant victories, from the defeat of Goliath to
becoming the King of Israel, to establishing Jerusalem as not just the capital
of a country but a religious center, ultimately not only for Judaism, but for
Christianity and Islam as well. But even the greatest of individuals fall—and
sometimes it is the most painful for us when our heroes, not the everyday,
average folk like you and me, but the greatest of us, gives in to sin. Over the
next three Sundays we will explore David’s downfall. The one who defeated a
giant will succumb to his own weakness. To his credit, unlike his predecessor
Saul, David does not lose his faith in God. After all, he will always be
remembered as the one who lived after God’s own heart.

It would be easy for the historians of the Bible to “accidentally”
forget the shortcomings of one of their favorite heroes. To their credit 1 and
2 Samuel, which tells the stories of Samuel, Saul, and David, and 1 and 2
Kings, which tells the stories of every king from Solomon onward, share the
stories with brutal honesty. (1 and 2 Chronicles, which recounts many of these
same stories, tends to delete the bad stuff about David—like the king himself,
no one is perfect.) The Bathsheba story represents the worst of David—and is a
reminder for all of us to watch out for the underestimated power of sin and our
broken relationship with God.

David suffered from unchecked desire. One day David
notices a beautiful woman bathing in the house next to his. David was
married to several women, and had many other concubines. He had many
sons, so there is no reason to lust after Bathsheba except that she was
beautiful and he desired her. He ordered his troops to go to her house
and take her to him. Knowing she was married to one of his best soldiers,
he slept with her anyway. And then she became pregnant. Now David
begins to scheme. He recalls Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, from the battle
for a weekend furlough. He says to Uriah, “You’ve done well; you deserve
a weekend at home with your wife.” But Uriah won’t go home. He says
it’s not fair for him to be with his wife when the other soldiers are still at
war. So David throws a party. Uriah becomes drunk. And he
still refuses to go home. Then David gets desperate. He writes an
order to his commander, saying Uriah is to be placed on the front lines, then
the other Israelites are to retreat, ensuring Uriah’s death. Uriah
literally carries his own death warrant to his commanding officer. Once
Uriah is dead, David allows Bathsheba to mourn for a week and then marries her. For
one described as having a heart for God, David breaks nearly all of the Ten
Commandments in just this one episode: adultery, murder, coveting, stealing,
disregarding God and trusting too much in his own power.

Over the years, commentators have tried to take David off
the hook, implying that Bathsheba purposefully bathed in plain sight in order
to lure David. She was the schemer. But the text in no way says
that. David is the responsible party here, using his power and position
to acquire whatever he desires. Lust often leads to damaged relationships
and severe consequences because of the abuse of power. We see it in schools, we
see it in our elected leaders, and we see it in our churches. We abuse the
power we’ve received because of our position for our own lustful purposes. This
is what David does. The danger of lust lies with how one understands other
people. In healthy relationships, each member is treated with an equal
amount of respect and honor. One does not sacrifice more than the other;
there is balance. Someone put it this way: a river is beautiful to look
at when it exists within its banks, but when it floods it ceases to be
beautiful, destroying everything in its path. Sexual desire between
committed adults is beautiful, but when the boundaries are broken it becomes
just as destructive as the flood. Let’s be clear: his interest in her is
only lust. Not love. If she had not become pregnant he would never have spoken
to her again. This was not a digression of character—it was a brutal, awful
attack on her personhood. In fact, one could argue this was not a sexual
encounter at all, but rape—the Hebrew word often translated “sent for”—as in
“he sent for her”—is rightly translated “he took her.” It’s the same word
Samuel used to describe what the king would do to the people’s possessions: “He
will take…” your money as taxes. “He will take…” your sons for war. Well, now
David “takes” Bathsheba for his own selfish desires. His power, as king, drives
the story. David’s manipulation and scheming ultimately pay their toll on
his family. The baby conceived in his act of lust with Bathsheba
dies. In the future, one of David’s sons, Amnon, will rape his
half-sister, Tamar, then send her away in disgrace instead of marrying
her. Her full brother, another of David’s sons, Absolom, then murders
Amnon. Later Absolom overthrows David and makes himself king. We’ll
talk about the destruction of David’s family in further detail in a couple of
weeks. For now, remember this: sin, when allowed to overcome us, causes a
multiplying effect, where nothing in our lives is safe.

Psalm 14 describes the human
condition in this way:

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no
God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does
good.

TheLordlooks down from heaven on humankind to see
if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.

They have all gone astray, they are all
alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon theLord?

There they shall be in great terror, for God
is with the company of the righteous.

You would confound the plans of the poor,
but theLordis their refuge.

For thousands of years, folk tried their best to understand
the human condition and our propensity to fail. Genesis begins with the story
of Adam and Eve, the first human couple, too overcome with their own desire for
god-like abilities that they broke the one rule they were asked to follow.
Commentators developed the concept of Original Sin based on this story. Every
person, since “The Fall” of Adam and Eve, has a sort of genetic disorder—a
brokenness passed down from the first human couple. Only the grace and power of
Jesus Christ, through his resurrection from the dead, has the ability to
restore this relationship with God.

When we began discerning what Lectio would look like—how it would be a different worship
opportunity than our Sanctuary services—we examined elements in the service,
like music, liturgy, and everything else. I wanted to try something new in my
preaching as well. For thirteen years I was a series preacher, using the
Lectionary only from time to time to fill in the holes between series.
Lectionary or I was always a preach one text sort of guy. I wanted to try something
new here. I would use the Lectionary (hence the name of the service lectio), we would read all four assigned
texts every week regardless of length, and I have tried, with varying results,
to preach on a common theme between the four texts. For today, the first two
texts, the David and Bathsheba story and Psalm 14, go naturally together. The brokenness
of humanity and our need for redemption.
Here’s the last verse of Psalm 14: “When the Lord changes his people’s
circumstances for the better…” (not if, but when) “…Jacob will rejoice; Israel
will celebrate!”

But the Gospel text surprised me: Jesus feeding the large
crowd by the sea and afterward walking on the water to the disciples. What does
that text have to do with the human condition??? And I was frustrated for
several days. I was tempted to drop the gospel from the sermon altogether and
just focus on the Old Testament stuff, which is vitally important.

But then this came to me, and you can tell me if it works;
well, tell me it works. The gospel text does not speak to the brokenness of
humanity. It speaks to the power of God to overcome and transform reality. On
the seashore the large crowd is hungry and worn out—have yall heard the new
term hangry (hungry + angry; I was
surprised to type that word and not find a red squiggly line under it—although
yall did have one)? This is hangriness (red squiggly on that one) on a massive
scale. But Jesus, and Jesus alone, is able to meet the need. In the other
accounts of this story Jesus does the blessing and breaking, but it is the
disciples who first notice the need and who eventually distribute the food. In
John Jesus controls the entire scene. These are people will all kinds of needs,
living though all kinds of challenges. They are all broken, all in need of
God’s infinite power. So everyone who was hungry was fed with the new life of
Jesus Christ. Everyone experiences the fullness of life offered through faith.
At the end of the day, the exhausted disciples are on the boat crossing the
sea. Jesus is not with them for some reason. The water became rough and the
wind strong. Jesus, unseen by the disciples, sees their fear and calms it: “I
am. Don’t be afraid.” Invoking God’s name, easing their fear, Jesus embodies
God’s power.

The epistle reading, from Ephesians 3, implores us to accept
and claim the transforming power of God: “I ask that he will strengthen you in
your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. I ask that
Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong
roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and
length, height and depth, together with all the believers. I ask that you will
know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled
entirely with the fullness of God.” The knowledge of that love is what can
reform the human condition and restore our broken relationship with God. That
is good news for us! The feeding of a large crowd was always considered a
communion story: Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, distributes it.
Communion is a tangible way to see, taste, and hear God’s redemption and power.

I know the David and Bathsheba story is serious,
and I hope no one here thinks we sort of buried it under the rug this morning.
This episode is far reaching in David’s life, and we will pick it up again the
next two Sundays. Next week we will learn about owning sin and seeking God’s
forgiveness. The following week we’ll learn about the consequences of sin—how
lives other than the immediate ones involved are impacted. Overcoming the human
condition is something only God’s power is strong enough to do. So for today we
honor and celebrate the goodness of God, who sees our need and meets it in ways
that transform and give the possibility of new life. The Ephesians text ends with these words: “Glory to God, who is able
to go far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within
us; glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever
and always. Amen!

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